Mark Hayter: “Bad Today, Good Tomorrow”

Last week, Jill told me that she’s been putting butter in her coffee. How do you react to something like that? No, seriously, I want to know how you react.

What added to the puzzlement of Jill’s statement was the fact that she said it very matter-of-factly. -- Jill: I’ve been putting butter in my coffee. So, I got new curtains yesterday. They’re yellowish-orange. Me: What! Jill: Yellowish-orange. Mark: I don’t give a pound of dill weed, about your curtains! What was that about buttering up your coffee?

Jill said that butter brings out the flavor in coffee and makes it less bitter. And since butter is now good for you, she uses it in her coffee instead of sugar. I didn’t want to tell her that next year sugar will be the new kale. (This year it was determined that raw kale can damage your thyroid. It usually takes about a decade for foods to recover from bad press.)

I’ve pretty well had it with people coming up with “new” findings about food. Stuff that used to be bad for us is now good. And what used to be good for us is now eating holes in our colons. Some of it is even giving us Alzheimer’s. Which reminds me, Jill said that butter actually helps you think. You wanna know what I think?

It wasn’t that long ago that the margarine industry was created so we wouldn’t all die from eating butter. Now we’re told that the oils used in making margarine were killing us, and the butter that was killing us was actually helping us. To the point that it jump starts our brain.

Immediately after hanging up on my sister, I made some coffee and put a small pad of butter in it. I was flabbergasted at how long it took a small pad of room-temperature butter to dissolve in a cup of hot coffee. No way did I want a glob of butter to sneak into my mouth. Eventually, I took a sip of the concoction and, son-of-a-gun, I discovered that butter can in no way replace sugar in coffee. It’s as practical as replacing the sugar in a cake mix with black olives.

To be honest, the butter didn’t do much for my coffee. It wasn’t worse, but I didn’t considerate it an improvement. One thing it did do is give my empty coffee mug a greasy sheen.

By the way, I did a little research before you got here and found out that the people who recommend we put butter in our coffee say that you must use only grass-fed butter. Crazy me didn’t even realize that butter had to eat. You can discover the weirdest things through research.

My internet investigation also led me to HEB. Mr. Butts sells Ladybird Butter Coffee Bombs. The bombs are made with grass-fed butter, coconut oil, spices and hemp protein. I think it’s the hemp that gave Ladybird the idea to put “bomb” in the name. Six coffee bombs sell for $10. My Duncan Donut Keurik cups cost me 56 cents apiece. (At Sam’s) If I put a single butter bomb in each cup of coffee, my coffee consumption would cost me $335 a month.

I can’t give up coffee, because its been found that three to five cups a day is good for you. The research is not in yet to determine what a combination of butter, coconut oil, “spices” and hemp protein does to your body. It might make me more creative. But, I can’t afford the cost of creativity. Coffee, I’m good with.

Another thing; we should only buy butter that was made with milk from cows that ate grass and not grain. Grain is now bad for us. For one thing, it makes us dumber by the day. And, it makes our digestive system go border-wall on us.

Right now wheat, rice and corn have a major PR problem. It took humanity 10,000 years to discover that eating grain is bad for you. One way scientists came to this discovery was from research that showed there is evidence that ancient people had soft bones, and few of them were overweight. Since many of the ancients ate a lot of bread, and bread is made from grain, “ergo proctor hoc” grain is bad for the human body. I had no idea that scientist could determine a person’s weight from a 3000 year-old skeleton.

Other findings show that bacon isn’t bad for you as long as you don’t pig out. Nuts are good in moderation. I’ll have you know that, according to my nut jar, a serving of cashews is 16 nuts. I’m fairly sure that would be moderation for a seagull.

Did you know that if you had to choose between a bowl of oatmeal and a baked potato, you’d be better off with the potato? That’s the new finding. If you put both butter and hemp on your potato, you’ll become a brilliant philospher to other bake potato eaters. Seems like I read that somewhere.

I have no idea how many of these “facts” are legit. Obviously, it doesn’t matter, because they’ll all be reversed by Christmas. I have it on pretty good authority that next year it will be determined that pumpkin spice causes warts. Every bread, beverage and bundt cake industry will be brought to its knees.

You can contact Mark athayter.mark@gmail.com. “The Summer of 1976” is still available on e-book at Amazon Books.